


Coming Outta My Cage (And I've Been Doing Just Fine)

by Torchiclove



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (turning saints into the sea), Angst, F/F, Jealousy, One Night Stands, Pining, also kind of a fix-it, ep 26 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 13:06:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15340491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Torchiclove/pseuds/Torchiclove
Summary: anonymous asked: Okay, but imagine Yasha angsting over Beau/Keg set to Mr. Brightside.I delivered.





	Coming Outta My Cage (And I've Been Doing Just Fine)

Yasha sits with her back against cold iron, eyes closed, trying to ignore the chafe of the bindings against her wrists and ankles, the terrible pressure of the gag in her mouth. She doesn’t know how long it’s been since they were dropped off in this room, but it’s been days since they were captured. 

She’s jolted out of her stupor by the sound of metal clanking beside her, and her muscles tense. The bindings won’t snap, she knows, but she tries anyway, raw skin only becoming more bloodied as she strains against the rope. There are soft voices, now, but she can’t quite tell what they’re saying.

A shadow moves in front of her cage, a small body, and before she can start to panic Yasha finds herself staring into wide, yellow eyes.

“Shh,” Nott says, and Yasha relaxes slightly as she starts fiddling with the lock. With some effort, it gives, and the door swings open. Nott takes out a dagger and cuts through the ropes on Yasha’s hands, then removes the gag.

She gasps, instinctively, as it’s removed, almost choking as she draws air into her lungs. Nott backs up and Yasha undoes the binding on her ankles, then crawls out of the cage. 

The room is dimly lit, and she sees Jester standing just a few feet away. Nott’s already gotten to work on the next cage, and there’s an eerie silence to the place. Yasha can’t see the rest of the group, and she assumes Jester’s silence means they’re not safe yet.

Nott finishes unlocking the final cage and Fjord exits, beleaguered but okay. She motions silently for them to follow her, and the three of them crouch down to stealthily pick their way through the unfamiliar place.

Nott leads them through a series of hallway until she finally finds a door, and upon opening it they’re met with a clear night sky and a gust of cold air. Outside, the rest of the group is waiting anxiously, all crouched and ready to pounce in case something went wrong.

As it becomes apparent that they’re free, the tension drops, and wide smiles crawl across everyone’s faces. Yasha notices someone new—a heavily armored dwarf, a weapon at each hip, trailing behind Beau as the group converges to greet them. 

She’s surprised with a hug from Molly, which she happily returns, but something in her heart drops at the look in his eyes, one that’s damming back something dark. She’ll ask questions later. For now, everyone is in quiet celebration—Fjord and Caleb awkwardly shaking hands, Jester crushing Beau in a huge that lifts her off her feet.

“Alright, this is real sweet, but we need to go,” the dwarf says, and everyone nods. 

“This is Keg,” Molly says loudly, and Keg rolls her eyes. 

“Introductions can wait,” she grumbles.

Keg leads them to what she describes as one of the least shady taverns in Shady Creek Run (“It’s not a front, and that’s the best you’re gonna get.”) where they buy up a few rooms and sit down for a much-needed drink. Everyone takes turns explaining what happened while they were gone, and as they get to the part where they’ve just ambushed the caravan, a bit of a hushed silence falls.

Molly finally breaks it, voice shaking just a bit. “It went bad, and I, well, I died.”

Yasha cocks her head in confusion; he’s obviously sitting right there. “What?”

Beau takes over, “Lorenzo just, he...didn’t show any mercy, and he fucking killed Molly, and we, well Keg, she knew a guy, and we managed to get him back, but…”

“We’re in the hole about five hundred gold and a huge favor,” Caleb finishes grimly, taking a slow sip of ale. There’s a long silence. 

“How’d you get us out?” Jester asks, quieter than usual.

“We tracked the bastard down, got him alone, and fucking killed him,” Molly says, and there’s a flare of vindictive rage in his eyes. “Keg led us the rest of the way.”

“What about the rest of them?” Fjord asks.

“I figure they’re my problem now,” Keg pipes up, “Without Lorenzo around they’re gonna be pretty scattered, so I think I can handle them.”

“We’d help you out if we weren’t so fuckin’ busy,” Beau says with a shrug. “I mean, if we wrap up this Gentleman thing and you still need us…”

“We’ll see,” Keg says, and there’s the hint of a smile on her face as she leans over the nudge Beau’s bicep with her shoulder. Beau winks, a little clumsy, a little overexaggerated.

Yasha downs the rest of her ale in one, shifting uncomfortably on the hard wooden seat. 

“Speak for yourself, I never wanna see this place again,” Molly says, and it’s just a little too serious, sending the table into another awkward silence. Jester manages to break it with something bubbly and off topic, but the heavy tension is still sitting at the back of their minds.

It’s the type of night where the drinks don’t stop flowing, and for better or worse, everyone gets as drunk as they’ve been since Hupperdook. Yasha watches Molly in his element, flitting around the tavern and offering to do card readings for a drink, paying for the drink anyway, fumbling with his tricks in his haze. It’s exaggerated, a little _too_ ostentatious, even for him, and she makes a mental note to watch him in the days that follow. 

Caleb handles his alcohol about as well as she expects—he quickly passes out on the table. Jester, who decided to remain sober and keep her eye out for pickpockets, begrudgingly carries him up to his room and lays him down; Fjord follows her and never comes back down. Nott stays upstairs, too. 

Yasha’s drunk but not as much as she wishes. She absentmindedly watches Beau through the night, losing any semblance of subtlety as her and Keg becomes more wrapped in each other, until it’s like they’re at a different table entirely rather than sitting right across from her. 

It’s just a little annoying, watching her get all swept up in someone she met less than a week ago. And there’s nothing charming about Keg—her whole schtick is the gruff and awkward thing, and both Beau and Yasha have that covered, they don’t need another one. Yasha downs another round as Jester returns from dealing with their drunken compatriots, all smiles.

“Hey Beau,” she says, and Beau looks up like she’d forgotten other people exist.

“Yeah?”

“Have you told Keg about all the cool shit we’ve done?” She shimmies her shoulders suggestively, and Yasha internally groans as Beau’s face lights up.

“So we fucking, uh–” She quickly racks her brain for something, pausing in her inebriated stupor, “—Okay, this one time, we saved a whole town from a pack of gnolls, like, they showed up and were burning the place down, and I ducked through this burning building, and there were three—no, four—they were on me, with bows and clubs and shit, and one of them shot at me, and I caught the arrow _right_ out the fucking air, like…” Beau mimics it, reaching her hand up to grab the imaginary missile and spinning to flick it back.

Yasha wasn’t there, but she’s pretty sure Beau is exaggerating, and if Jester’s grin is anything to go by her suspicion is right. Keg, however, is eating it up.

“That’s hot,” she says, something that’d become a bit of a theme throughout the night, whenever Beau did...anything, really.

“You keep saying that,” Beau slurs, face curling into that sharp, beautiful smile, “What’re you gonna do about it?”

It’s not slick, Yasha knows that’s _not_ slick, and yet she can’t help but feel a flutter in her chest (and elsewhere) on Keg’s behalf. The tension that’d been apparent all night reaches a breaking point.

"Come find out." Keg grabs Beau by the wrist and hauls her out of her seat, and Beau lets her, impressed with the strength. They try to walk casually towards the staircase and up to the room, try to have some sort of discretion, but it’s hopeless effort. Jester wolf whistles as they disappear.

“Hey Yasha, you okay?”

Her question snaps Yasha back into reality, and she realizes that her white-knuckled grip on the edge of the table has splintered the wood. “Yeah,” she says bluntly, and adds, “There’s too many people in here.” Her chair scrapes loudly across the ground as she pushes it back and turns to the door. Jester sputters a bit, but doesn’t get anything out before Yasha’s outside, the cold air washing over her in the dark night.

She kinda wants to get in a fight. This is a terrible place to get in a fight, she knows that, and it makes it all the more frustrating, that there’s nothing she can fix with a punch. She cracks her knuckles and listens to the dull pop ring out through the still night. She doesn’t know where she’s going, doesn’t know _anything_ here. She stalks into the alleyway beside the tavern, the dark space between buildings where she can find a moment of quiet.

She feels like her skin is too tight, like her tongue is pushing into the back of her teeth to suppress a scream. She glances up, hopeful to catch a glimpse of the clouds, but instead she sees a neat row of windows, cheap and without curtains to keep out prying eyes. It’s dark, but Yasha’s no stranger to seeing in the dark, and she catches faint grey shadows moving in one of the rooms.

The top half of a lithe figure is visible, sitting across the lap of someone much stouter, wider, and shorter. Yasha knows, she knows as soon as she sees them, but she can at least pretend like it’s strangers up there in the window. The lithe figure places a hand on the chest of the other and pushes her down onto an invisible bed; the stout figure finds her shoulders and slips off her vest.

Yasha sees it in black and white, as vague snatches of shadows. But she also sees it in full color, bright and loud and in her face, imagining every detail. Imagining the firm pressure of Beau’s hands, the feeling of sliding those robes off and seeing her bare, muscled shoulders–

This is stupid.

Yasha tears her eyes away from the window and sits with her back against the rough wood, fingers digging grooves into the cold, hard dirt. She can see her breath in short puffs in front of her, but the chill doesn’t reach her boiling blood. She has no right to be this angry, she doesn’t even know _why_. It’s just that the sight of Beau fawning over that _fucking_ dwarf is infuriating.

She feels sick to her stomach, the night’s ale souring in her gut. She’s drunk and mad and _tired_ , the weight of the last few days falling heavily on her shoulders. She needs to hit something. She needs to throw up. She needs another drink.

She stands up slowly, the hard anger fading now and giving way to fatigue, to sadness. She trudges back into the tavern, and the chill of the outside sticks even in the warm air. Jester greets her with a wide smile that thinly conceals worry.

Yasha waves half-heartedly and heads straight to the bar. She orders a couple of drinks and knocks them back quickly, but it doesn’t help. The buzz in the back of her head is nearly unbearable; she’s dizzy with it.

“I’m going to bed,” she announces to Jester, who’s sitting alone at the table.

“I’ll come up soon,” she replies faintly, hollowly. 

It takes Yasha a long while to find the room, fumbling with the key and trying to remember in her haze of alcohol which one they’d rented for her and Jester. While she’s in the hallway, she can hear faint noises coming from behind one of the doors, breathy moans and fragments of curses, in a voice that’s unmistakable. Yasha’s always imagined she’d be loud. This isn't how she wanted to find out.

As the lock clicks and open and she stumbles into the room, that thought doesn’t sit well. The notion that Yasha’s been trying to avoid all night comes crashing down on her. _That should be me_ , she thinks with a vindictive fury, teeth clenched and hands balled into fists. She sits down on the edge of the bed, back rigid, head swimming. 

It’s no secret that Beau is attractive, that Beau is attracted to _her_ , that Beau’s been flirting in her own overdramatic way since the day they met. Yasha never put much stock in it—it was cute, but not serious. And now, watching her do the same thing to someone else, someone gruff and strong and awkward, it...hurts. Yasha likes Beau more than she ever intended. She let the strange charm get under her skin and now she’s paying for it, stuck alone while Beau moves on and has her way with that dwarf. It didn't mean anything, it never did, and it never will.

The door opens and Jester steps in, distracting Yasha from her spiral. She climbs into the other bed and curls up under the blankets, looking cozy despite everything. She looks happy, despite _everything_. "Goodnight Yasha," she says sweetly, the last hints of a genuine smile still spread across her face. 

Jester’s right, she needs to sleep this off, to slip into unconsciousness until the morning when she can just leave and forget about it. She can just _leave_ , let Beau be alone with her new toy, and in the solitary confines of the road, it will all slip away into the distant past.

 

Yasha wakes in the morning with a pounding headache, and she doesn’t leave.

**Author's Note:**

> Catch me writing about lesbians to cope :') I listened to Mr. Brightside approximately seven times while writing this. And I just kinda. Wanted to get it posted before thursday, so it might feel a little rushed.


End file.
